


11-Nomenclature

by WritestuffLee



Series: The Warrior's Heart, Volume 1, Early Days [11]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: M/M, POV, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-08-21
Updated: 1999-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:28:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritestuffLee/pseuds/WritestuffLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obi-Wan contemplates the meaning of the word "master."</p>
            </blockquote>





	11-Nomenclature

Our last quiet night together before our next mission and you sit there with a quaintly archaic book on your lap when it could be me. Just look at you: I’ve been doing astrogation problems all night and am fed up to the teeth with numbers and symbols, but you’ve been sitting for hours, as still as you are now, with one long leg crossed over the other, and a large, blunt-fingered hand spanning from temple to the hinge of your jaw, almost meditating, never tiring of the words on the page. You and your words.

They’re very important to you, words. Time and again, negotiating treaties, I’ve watched you struggle to be precise and exact and choose the ones with just the right shade of meaning. It’s what makes you such an excellent mediator, among other things. You’re almost lawyerly in your ability to hammer out detailed prose that offers the concessions and compromises that will hold together peace agreements and resolve trade disputes or define boundaries and specific rights of law. And yet I know—as few but your closest friends suspect—that you are also a poet, constructing intricate edifices of finely drawn images, built with words. Had you a more worshipful padawan, I have no doubt your concise and pithy lines would soon become unofficial teaching aphorisms. But you have shaped me, in your image, to be wary of aphorisms, even your own, Master.

Master. Now there’s a deceptively simple word. Two syllables. Plain Basic, not a fancy derivative of a dead language like “padawan,” which comes from the Old High Gibberish root “patar,” “to seek,” and so on and so on and so on until I’m dead asleep or past caring. Linguistics. _Yawn._

Such a simple word, with so many different meanings: Adept. Teacher.

Owner.

Connotation, as you would say, is everything.

I don’t know which meaning best fits you now. You are truly an adept of the Force, Master Jinn, one of the most powerful and wisest, trained by another adept with 750 years of knowledge and experience, much of which you absorbed. You are the finest of swordsmen, a warrior deeply attuned to the living Force. Your abilities make me the envy of any number of padawans who have dreamed or still do of being your apprentice; I’ve actually come to blows with one over it.

And I could not want for a better teacher, a kinder or more rigorous or more demanding one. You drive me hard in my training, always expecting improvement, always giving what’s needed to achieve it, handing out praise only when it’s well-deserved, but encouragement always. You know your own mind and expect me to know mine, not to agree with you blindly, but I must also know when to follow instructions without hesitation, when to obey you without question.

Another deceptively simple word, “obey.”

Children obey. Subordinates obey. Apprentices obey. Slaves obey. Lovers, however, might or might not.

Which am I, to you?

Seven years I’ve been your padawan—a word that encompasses so many states—growing into manhood under your wing. It took me almost that long to begin to understand you and your understated, quirky sense of humor and how deep it runs—how much life amuses you; or your dignity that looks so much like cold aloofness; or the adamantine sense of right and wrong that guides you, sometimes contrary to the Council, and makes you fearless in your defiance; the patience that comes to you so naturally, and makes you the best of teachers; the tenderness that runs under your skin like the blood in your veins, how you bleed when anything near you is wounded or in need, how you’ve bled since I’ve known you.

And the passion that drives you. Even after seven years, I didn’t suspect the depth of that, or its heat. Even now that we are lovers, I know I’ve only warmed myself in its coolest flames. It spurs you relentlessly from mission to mission, world to world, doing what you were trained to do, to protect, defend, to keep peace, to make and enforce it where you must, and to do so while mindful of those you serve, all the while watching out for the welfare and training of your padawan. And in bed—well, in bed your passion is another creature, Master.

In bed, Master Jinn, I sometimes fear going up in flames with you. I dream of that on occasion, lying beside you: our bed in flames. It’s one of my more obscure and uninterpretable dreams, clearly not the past, only metaphorically the present, possibly the future in some way I don’t understand. There’s always a pall of grief over it, so I haven’t examined it in my meditations. If it means disaster for us, I don’t want to know it. Call me a coward, but I’ve had enough of that kind of prescience lately, and am content to leave it to Master Yoda, who has the wisdom in his age to look into the future and know when and how to change it. Instead, I obey your admonition to be mindful of the present moment, especially the moments you’re touching me, the moments I want to stretch into one unending Now.

Because when you touch me, whether you’re correcting my stance in a kata, or rubbing the soreness out of my muscles, or stroking my cock, I feel more alive, more aware of what you wish me to feel in the Force than I do without your touch. It’s as though contact with you wakes up another sense in me, as if your caress opens the valve of a conduit to let your sense of the Force pour from you into me. When you come inside me, that’s exactly how it feels, like everything you are and feel is pouring into me. I am the vessel in which you contain your passion, your emotion, all those things the Jedi code insists we let go, all the things you’ve never fully put aside. Afterwards, when you fall asleep, I see a peace on your face you never know waking, not even in meditation.

But none of this changes the fact that you’re not just a Jedi Master, you’re _my_ Master. That’s one of the many terms of respect a padawan uses, calling his teacher My Master. It’s used in moments of abasement, when an apprentice—or even a former apprentice—has done or said something insolent or grossly defiant or incredibly stupid, usually after a rebuke. Or it’s a term of veneration and endearment. When I say to you, “Yes, My Master,” I am not just agreeing with you, or acquiescing, I’m giving you my devotion and ardor in that answer. Were you to ask if I love you, I would answer, “Yes, My Master.”

But you never do. I’ve told you often enough that I presume you know by now, and I’ve rarely questioned your feelings for me from the first time we made love. Though you don’t say it as often as I do, when you do tell me, it’s with all the passion in you, in words and actions. I’ve never been so sure of your feelings as I was when we made a sacred act of love in the Courtyard Garden and you finally let me inside—not inside your body, which I’ve entered before—but inside _you_ , behind your shields, most of them, at least. Finally, I know who you are. Not just My Master, not just Qui-Gon Jinn, but all that makes them both. I saw the awkward, shy, cautious child you were, the determined and tortured adolescent and the confident young man he grew into. I saw your pride in your first apprentice becoming a knight under your guidance and the pain Xanatos inflicted on you with his betrayal. I saw your hopes for me. I saw both your love and your grief for Tahl, and I saw your loneliness, the empty space all Jedi carry in them, forgoing homes and families for the greater good. And I saw who fills that space now, for you. That filled me with a fierce, possessive joy that matched your own. I saw what you hold in reserve, what will be mine when we are equals. You didn’t expect the same from me, but I had to return that gift, to let you know who I am, what you are to me, because there is so much we don’t know of each other, so much of our lives that occurred before we knew each other.

I turned twenty a few tenths ago and, not long after, we finally became lovers. The age difference between us—more than thirty years—should seem vast, but it doesn’t. Years pass for Jedi as they do for others, but we age relatively slowly—the one gift we have that offsets our small numbers. At any rate, I’ve loved you for so long that I don’t even think of how old you are. I look at you and don’t see _age_ but experience and wisdom. I suspect, anyway, that beneath the grizzled beard and the long greying hair is a much younger face, that you grew both hair and beard so you would look like the wise Jedi Master you are. They add a layer of gravity and help conceal the amused smile that’s so often on your lips, but can’t entirely hide it. In the same way, the stern look you wear so often can’t mask the kindness and warmth in those startlingly blue eyes, or the desire and hunger there, now that you’ve unmasked them to me. And what things that desire drives you to.

Now we come to the final meaning, Master.

In bed, you sometimes touch me like you own me, when we first lie down together. Your hands strip my clothes from me, then move over my skin like a slaver’s, testing the muscle, the bones, the ligaments, looking for weakness beneath the scars, making sure I’m whole and sound and not harboring some sickness before you use me. No part of me is too private for your examination and your fingers touch and probe without asking permission of me, or asking whether I care or want it or find it strange. It’s a role you’ve played before, and played too well, not so long ago, before we were lovers. I wonder still how we got through that mission without me turning on you and either screaming abuse at you in outrage and shame or falling at your feet and begging you to fuck me senseless right there in the slave market. Perhaps if I’d done the latter, I wouldn’t now have ten demerits on my record and be on a halfyear’s probation from the Council. It’s not wise to suppress so much desire.

Usually, it’s long before we even get to the bed that you touch me so. My padawan braid is like a leash to you: tug it and I can be pulled into your arms. Pull it back and I will expose my throat to you, submissive and subordinate, waiting for you to kiss or lick or bite as you choose. The first time you did that, closed your teeth around my windpipe like the dominant in the hunting pack, the first time we made love, I knew what you were doing. It came through clear as spoken words: _We may be lovers, padawan, but I am your master._ Later, when I made you say it, you denied it, but that changed nothing.

Not so long ago, you reminded me of who I am, that I am still your padawan, still your apprentice, your subordinate, as well as your lover. It’s put a distance between us that I’ve never wanted, but one that I understand I must endure until my knighting. You were right in that, and I was wrong; even in bed you are my master, for now. And I come when you call. I will always come when you call, even when I am no longer your apprentice.

As though reading my thoughts—and perhaps you are, as I haven’t been shielding them—you look up finally and your gaze travels the length of my body as I sprawl on the lounge.

I drop my tablet and stylus on the table and go to you, kneeling at your feet. You uncross your legs, reach out and wrap my braid around your fingers, spread your knees, and pull me between them.

“Padawan,” you murmur, lips brushing my mouth, tongue darting out. “Lover.”

“Qui-Gon. Lover,” I reply.

“Come to bed.”

“As you wish, My Master.”


End file.
